Monthly Archives: February 2015

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while, but fear held me back.

Fear of judgement (mostly me judging myself), fear of setting myself up for failure or embarrassment…

But honestly if I can’t write out my big, scary goals on my personal blog, then I’m already setting myself up for failure. I was also inspired by this post and this post. I love how easily/openly Christina and Caitlin talked about their goals. That’s the way you achieve great things! Putting it out there and then doing the work to get what you want.

So here it is: I want to qualify for the Boston marathon.

For someone with a marathon track record of 5:08:12 and a personal best time of 4:47:24, a part of me feels ridiculous to allow myself to hope that I can qualify for Boston someday. But, I’ve been dreaming about it for a couple of years, and last year was the first time where I felt like it could maybe become a reality some day.

I know there are other goals out there aside from the elusive (for average runners like myself) BQ. I get it – the marathon isn’t the only distance out there. There are plenty of other goals in different race distances that are just as difficult to strive for. Last year, I learned the hard way how humbling a 5K race could be. But from what I hear, the Boston race atmosphere is amazing and must be experienced in person. While I already plan to attend as a spectator, I really want to experience the race as a participant as well.

For a previously non-active, sendentary person like me, it would be (pardon my language) a pretty big fucking deal.

After my disastrous marathon attempts in 2010 and again in 2011, I wrote off the distance as “impossible for me”. Running a marathon (well) was out of my league, and I thought I was done with marathons for good. And then I met Mike. 🙂 He started to make me believe that I was capable of more than I had allowed myself to hope for. He got me thinking that successful racing went beyond “just being fast”. There’s a mental fitness that goes hand in hand with being physically fit and capable of racing to the best of your ability.

So that was my focus of last year – building confidence, getting mentally stronger, training smart and trusting in the process. Oh, and being patient! Being patient sucks!

So what exactly is my plan?

Well, my plan is to continue getting faster. A big lesson for me last year was learning to train at the fitness level I was currently at, rather than where I wanted to be at. I honestly used to think if you wanted to be fast, you just had to train fast and your body would adapt. Wrong. That was my approach in 2010-2012 and I was rewarded with a fantastic stress fracture and chronic aches and pains that I couldn’t seem to get rid of. So, I took a step back and focused on training consistently, even if that meant training at paces slower than where I was hoping to be at. I also took a break from training for long distance races (half and full marathons) and tried to work on my speed. Last year was a good year worth celebrating; I made it to all my races injury-free and managed a PB in every distance that I ran.

What is my goal race?

I don’t exactly have one. I’m registered for the Berlin marathon this coming Fall. I threw my name into the lottery and was lucky enough to get in. It would be great if I could try to BQ in Berlin, but realistically, I don’t think I’ll be there yet. My current half PR is 1:45:17. I’d have to run that pace for double the distance in order to qualify for Boston. Just saying that feels incredibly intimidating and scary.

So no, I don’t expect to BQ in Berlin. Maybe if I have super and fantastic training cycles between now and then with perfect race day conditions where absolutely nothing goes wrong and I don’t hit a wall… then maybe it could happen. But, that would be an A++++++ goal. And that is asking a lot out of the universe. 🙂 I want to get to the start line of Berlin healthy and race it to best of my ability. From there, I’ll assess how far away I am from the qualifying standard. It could take years. I may have to “age” into the next qualifying standard bracket. We’ll see.

But I’m going to try my hardest and someday I’ll be able to look back on these blog posts and remember that I had the guts to try.

Well, I love the way I eat in Switzerland. I have no idea if it’s representative of a typical Swiss diet.

For starters, I have been eating bread, full fat cheese, meat, and OMG CARBS for breakfast instead of the smoothie I had grown accustomed to in Toronto. Last year, I swore that no other breakfast could ever satisfy me in the way that a protein and fruit smoothie could.

A typical “day” in Toronto used to consist of:

Breakfast

My standard go-to Smoothie breakfast in Toronto. I had this even throughout the Winter months.

Smoothie made with protein powder, water, frozen berries, leafy greens (spinach or kale), and yogurt if I was feeling frisky. I’d top that with some homemade granola and try to hold off on eating again until lunch.

Lunch

A typical lunch. So much hummus.

I’d cook up a big serving of every single vegetable I could find in the tiniest bit of oil or water and then have that with some oven roasted tofu, eggs, or a ton of hummus. I made jokes about going through a container of hummus within days. My “starchy carb” of choice was rice, quinoa… or tiny slivers of bread so small that you couldn’t even use to make a finger sandwich with.

Snacks

Looking back, it’s no wonder I snacked voraciously throughout the afternoon. I ate a lot at lunch, but none of it was really satisfying. I would try my hardest to just ignore the temptation to snack too much until dinner time and feel a sense of pride if I “made” it until dinner time.

Dinner

I tried to fill up on veggies, and skimp on the protein & starchy carbs because that’s what I was “taught” to do. #healthyliving #orsomethinglikethat

Mike and I would trade off nights during the week to make dinner, and it usually contained some type of protein, vegetable, and starchy carb. I usually went back for seconds or thirds.

Evening snack

Snack? I tried not to. Except on weekends. Mike and I would try to cut out chocolate throughout the week and then on the weekend, we’d pick up 2-3 of our favourite chocolate bars and then go to town. We’re self-proclaimed chocaholics. I always promised myself I’d have some restraint, but would end up eating the equivalent of at least one whole bar of chocolate.

Then I’d feel guilty for the rest of the week and try to start over. Was it healthy? In some ways, yes, I think I ate a pretty healthy diet in Toronto. But, in other ways, the constant obsessing, snacking, and the guilt I attached to any “bad food” I would eat was exhausting and stressful. I’ve realized that living a life of guilt over my food choices cancelled out any of the “good” ones I was making.

A typical day in Switzerland now consists of:

Breakfast

The muesli breakfasts started in Sweden – enhanced by this amazing Oat milk. Here in Switzerland, we just eat it with regular cow’s milk.

A bowl of muesli, store brand “bio” corn flakes (because I love them, dammit!), and some unsweetened wheat puffs. I drink this with regular cow’s milk. Drinking cow’s milk in Toronto is like asking for a world of stomach pain for the rest of the day. Here, it means making my breakfast more filling because I’m drinking that instead of diluted nut water that typically has emulsifiers and sweeteners added to it. How big is my serving? I don’t know. I don’t measure, I just pour it into the bowl and have seconds if I feel I need it. I usually don’t.

Lunch

Our host Maja made this Swiss bread with fresh yeast and kneaded the dough with her own hands. It was the softest, most pillowy sandwich bread I’ve ever eaten. When we don’t have fresh bread like this available, we typically pick up a small whole grain sourdough loaf from the local bakery.

Lunch consists of a salad with whatever vegetables we have in the fridge. Usually that’s some type of leafy green salad with carrots, beets, and pepper (or capsicum as Mike refers to it as). Then I’ll slice myself some bread and make a sandwich with … wait for it… smashed avocado, full fat cheese and pickles because I’m weird and think that combination is absolutely amazing. Sometimes if I’m really lucky, I’ll fry up a fresh chicken egg. Is this really my life right now?

Snack

I always have a coffee right after lunch. Sometimes Mike and I will share a pastry in the afternoon if we end up at a cafe to do work. Sometimes I’ll have a banana if I’m at “home”. Some days I’ll eat several handfuls of nuts and chocolate covered raisins (at certain times of the month, this is almost a necessity). Sometimes I won’t have anything at all until dinner.

Dinner

Lots of meat, freshly made spaetzle, and a side salad.

Dinner has been a big salad and whatever we’re in the mood for. Sometimes it’s a traditional Swiss dish like Raclette which is essentially melted cheese over boiled potatoes. Other times, it’s just scrambled eggs and some bread. A few times I’ve had the desire to cook something more fancy and made a vegetable stir fry. Once I even pan roasted some tofu, but I haven’t had the desire to do that again since. Something tells me that tofu isn’t a food they specialize in here anyway so it’s not as good as what I had available to me in Toronto.

Evening snack

Chocolate. Always chocolate. I tried waiting until the weekend, but decided that life was too short.

♦♦♦

I haven’t weighed myself since I’ve come to Europe. I’ve struggled with disordered eating a lot in the last few years and have learned that it’s generally better not to know. For now, all the clothes that I brought to Europe still fit. As long as they don’t get so small that I’m forced to buy a new wardrobe, I’m in good shape.

I don’t necessarily think my meals are drastically different, I still get my vegetables in (so long as they’re available), but I don’t really pay too much attention to the amount of fat in the food I eat and hell yes, I eat bread every day (#carbsforlife). The main differences are that I don’t fear “bad foods” (high in fat! bread and chocolate every day! white rice and white bread!) anymore and that I’ve been amazed by is how good the food here makes me feel. Maja tells me that there are extremely strict food laws here. I guess that’s why the food is so expensive, but that’s also why it’s such good quality. In Toronto, drinking milk and eating cheese on a daily basis would always result in me huddled into a ball in pain.

I know there’s a whole food movement that companies are aggressively marketing in North America, but here, I don’t feel like there’s even a need to do this. Because it’s just a standard cost of entry. There’s no need to go to a specialty grocer and worry about a dirty dozen, or that any animal protein you buy could be packed with antibiotics and other fillers.

Vegetables here have so much flavour, that I don’t even find myself reaching for salad dressing. I don’t obsess about getting my fill in every day – some days I get more servings, other days I get less. I feel satisfied, and I think about food less overall. I look forward to every meal, but I don’t worry about calories or getting enough of a balance. I just eat, and then I move on with the rest of my day.

I used to read about people who claimed to eat this way. I’ve read countless articles on “intuitive eating” and honestly never thought it was possible for me to adopt that type of lifestyle. I obsessed way too much about food. I worried when I ate “badly” and always felt like I was making up for something (e.g. no chocolate or baked goods for a week because I “indulged” on something and felt bad).

I know our situation in Switzerland is unique – we only have three grocery stores near us and the few restaurants in our area are extremely expensive and ordering off the menu is a big guessing game since hardly anyone speaks English. I don’t know what life will be like wherever else we go. I know that this way of eating was something I got used to in Scandinavia but fell out of in England when I felt like there was food to tempt me everywhere I looked when I went outside. In England, we ate out every day and many times those meals included chips (fries for you North Americans), burgers, and who knows what else. Some days, I wouldn’t have any vegetables at all.

I know I could easily fall into my old habits in Toronto, especially because (in my opinion), the culture as a whole is obsessed with food and you can’t really escape it. But, I feel like it’s less in my face here and that has given me a new perspective that I hope I can take with me when I come back to Canada. I can’t really describe it, but it takes less of a centre stage here and for someone who’s been struggling with food for years… it feels like a huge weight off my shoulders.